Guild Wars 2

Fuzzion.2504:

U know there was a time when my ele could catch those warriors. Sigh.

The irony is that Ele mobility was nerfed because of spirit watch, yet warriors were always faster than Eles and obviously considerably more durable, it was just that at that time, warriors were regarded as kitten and noone really wanted to use mainhand sword.

The RTL nerfs really ought to be reverted. It was the mobility nerfs more than anything else that killed my enjoyment of D/D Ele and Ele in general.

Draknar.5748:

scerevisiae.1972:

Disagree about rallying, rallying ruins PVP.

It absolutely does not ruin PvP, but it would certainly be improved without it. Downed state is fine IMO, you just shouldn’t be allowed to rally. You should be forced to have a teammate revive you or revive on your own.

The reason I say it doesn’t ruin PvP is because I play PvP every day and have a blast doing it. It would be quite the claim to say it ruined PvP, when really all it does is make things slightly more annoying.

When I said “rallying ruins PVP”, I really meant I think rallying ruins PVP. IMO it goes without saying that all comments reflect the viewpoint of the poster, sorry if you were confused.

I also have to say, reading through this thread there is a really wide range of responses… maybe “top 5” wasn’t enough.

The sooner we have selectable weapon skills the better. Then you might see some level of PVE balance.

just make the results link public so we can see for ourselves pls.

I think we’re more reliant on 15+ water than arcane now.

Realistically, PVP Eles will always be reliant on water/arcane until (a solo version of) Elemental Attunement is baseline, with something like the current 15 water skill swapped with soothing mist.

(From mainly a WVW perspective)

Focus is not at all viable because it completely lacks mobility and any form of healing, both of which can be found in O/H dagger. The dmg and CC potential of focus is also the lowest of all 4 Ele weapon options.

Changes that make sense to me:

• add swiftness to Air #4
• change water #4 to a version of burning speed (dagger fire #3) that chills
• increase burning duration on fire #4 from 1sec -> 4sec
• remove the 1sec CD on the burning inflicted by fire #5 – ie: 3 hits in 1sec = 3sec burning, 1stack might, rather than 1sec burning, 1 stack might.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.

This. Able to blast up to 3 fields (of different types) at once, but with a diminishing returns system:

if #fields > 1, each field effect duration is decreased by 20%, cumulative, so:

• most recent field – 80% usual duration
• 2nd most recent – 64%
• 3rd – 51%

and/or…

Fields can interact, to form new fields, eg:

• fire + water field = steam field (cures conditions and grants regen)
• ethereal + dark field = void field (convert boons -> conditions)
• ethereal + light field = celestial field (convert conditions -> boons)
  etc

Obviously wouldn’t need to be exhaustive.

Ele utilities are really bad because baseline survivability of Ele is really bad, in PVP, means cantrips (and 15+ water), as they’re the only utility type that provides a reliable survivability boost.

• Arcane utilities IMO are fine, it’s the Elemental Surge trait that needs a buff IMO, either the condition durations are too short, or the trait should grant a boon to affected allies, or clear conditions, something like that.
• Glyphs lack trait support (Inscription by itself is really weak), cast too slowly (opportunity cost:benefit is not there), and are fairly inconsequential. The non-elite elemental glyph is especially ineffective, IMO it should be replaced completely with some kind of mobility or survivability skill.
• Signets have good trait choices, but the signets themselves are somewhat weak, and again, don’t offer a lot of survivability. It takes a full 70 trait points to make a decent signet-aura build (20/10/10/30/0), and it’s still not all that good.
• Conjures are mutually exclusive with the class’ core mechanic and are too clunky and cumbersome to use for PVP combat. Case in point, FGS is effectively used as a mobility skill.

Overall, I would look at first bringing up the baseline survivability of Ele by making a caster-only version of Elemental Attunement baseline, adding a trait for the AOE version, and swapping the EA effect with the 15 water trait.

Swagger.1459:

Dee Jay.2460:

Welcome to soloQ.

That’s why most people just solo-play teamQ.

I think you meant…

“Welcome to GW2.

That’s why most people just play something else for pvp."

:)

This. There are a lot of things to like about this game, but s/tPVP is not one of them.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

I think the one thing that might put engi into S tier is Automated Response. It’s an actually useful version of diamond skin

Fixed that for you.

sorrychief.2563:

You don’t even need to dodge DT you can simply walk away from the aoe.

This. It’s a ridiculous skill. It’s literally been designed to miss in the general case.

Should be more or less instant and ground-targeted (with dmg nerfed appropriately), and phoenix made into an aimed projectile (like staff earth #5). Make ring of fire (dagger fire #5) ground-targeted while you’re at it.

Shatterstone needs to be instant + better dmg or have a secondary effect added – chill + ice field, immobilise/cripple, knockback, whatever. Just something.

dietzero.3514:

Not surprised Elementalists are dominating last place. The profession is just so badly designed as far as PvP goes.

This.

The class feels so fragile regardless of build, so slow and cumbersome with abilities (huge telegraphs + slow cast times), such few viable options with builds and slot skills, weak damage, so much hard work only to get facerolled by passive/AI nonsense, no role in PvP that can’t be done vastly better by another class/build.

Unfortunately no. Ele has been balanced around need ing to swap attunements. Quite a limited design IMO, the class would have been so much more interesting if you could choose to specialise in 1-2 elements as well as being able to generalise in all 4.

That said, PVE is so easy (and boring) I usually just autoattack in fire while semi-afk as it’s not worth the effort to do otherwise IMO.

I think auras are good enough, the only thing is that they require a full 70pt investment – 20/10/10/30/0 – that’s all 70pts spoken for and even then, an aura build isn’t all that great.

I can live with the traits, the real weakness lies with the signets themselves. They don’t provide enough defense/mobility to be worth taking over cantrips.

Which is the core of the Ele dilemma – low base defense means everybody has to take 1-3 cantrips to have any chance of surviving damage.

IMO Ele needs a baseline defense mechanic that’s comparable to clones/stealth/aegis/evade-spam. Until then, PVP Eles are going to be bound to cantrips/water. A caster-only version of Elemental Attunement with soothing mist swapped with healing ripple IMO would do it.

While we’re at it, why does staff have the only lightning field in the game?

ps: trident and lightning hammer doesn’t count.

oZii.2864:

I disagree with earth being a bad trait line. It is actually a very good trait line. Rock Solid, stone splinter’s are popular traits along with earth’s embrace elemental shielding.

Yeah they’re the only 3 good traits. Earth is a bad line because neither of the GM traits are good and the 25pt trait is also pretty bad.

The other thing is that condition damage is pretty poor on Ele, so 300 condition dmg kind of feels like a waste… a bit like how i’d like to spec the trickery line on my thief but can’t justify 300 stat points wasted on condi dmg.

30 earth written in stone is decent but our signets aren’t except restoration imo but that has more to do with the signets then the traits.

Agree. Signet traits are pretty decent, but the signets themselves aren’t good enough, specifically, they don’t offer anything comparable to cantrips. SoR was overnerfed.

Earth can let you pick up much more damage then you get in water with serrated stone and stone splinters both are easy to take advantage off.

Water has traits that need work also but the stable traits are even with earth I feel. Water has the advantage of vitality tree.

IMO it’s still on par with Fire for worst trait line, because Ele can get its stability and damage bonuses elsewhere. The problem is there’s nothing really compelling or unique in Earth that’s comparable in overall offense/defense/utility to water/arcane.

silvershadez.8421:

I allways end up picking earth line recently. Giving me 20% more dmg.

20% more dmg if within 600 of target and if endurance isn’t full. That is, most of the time you’re not getting 20% more dmg.

DSkin is very useful especially versus mesmers (shatter mesmers won’t ILeap snare you) and necros (most start the fight with a fear, even power ones). It saved my butt a couple of times. I don’t run a heal build to keep me up above the 90% and i don’t run tanky (zerker + valk).

Strongly disagree. Unless they totally take you by surprise or start within 600 of you, shatter mesmers will almost always open with iZerker (GS) or iWarlock (staff) and 1-hit from either of these plus an auto-attack or 2 will definitely take you below 90% HP, in which case DS becomes 100% useless.

Beside the general uselessness of DS in practical terms, i.e. unless you’re 100% bunker you will spend most of the fight below 90% HP, there’s also the stat advantage of water.

Your 30 earth gives you an extra 300 toughness. On top of say 2.3K armour, 300 toughness translates to ~11.5% less direct damage. Versus a 10K shatter combo, that’s ~1150 less dmg you’d take with 30 earth.

With 30 water, you’d have an extra 3000HP, which together with the extra 300 healing power (an extra 300HP healed by healing ripple alone), is way more useful versus burst classes as it can (and often does) mean the difference between surviving a burst or not.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

scerevisiae.1972:

I would love to see GW1-style sub-classes return, even if it were a limited form, eg: you can choose skills from a subclass’ weapon skills if your own class can use that weapon.

I think you are misunderstanding, GW1 had dual-classes, we’re talking about a sub-class, e.g. thief —> assassin

A sub-class only the specific profession can choose.

I think that’s too restrictive and overall too much development work, especially given how slowly new skills are being added in the current game.

I think it would be better for existing classes to earn access to other class’ (weapon) skills to create hybrids. The primary class keeps their class mechanic and doesn’t get the subclass’ mechanic. In the case of thief subclasses, the various weapon skills are given CDs.

So a D/D Ele/thief with backstab, heartseeker and CnD would be possible, but they wouldn’t have access to traits and heartseeker might have something like a 5sec CD, CnD a 30sec CD, etc. Note that said Ele/thief would also not have access to thief traits or utilities (at least in the first rev), nor would they have initiative, but they would be able to stealth.

In terms of “earning” the subclass skills, they could be purchasable using the existing concept of skillpoints, eg: 25 skillpoints per subclass skill.

I think this version of subclasses offers way more build/gameplay options for way less development effort than effectively creating whole new classes.

I’d go with:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

as my 1 choice as I feel this game as a whole lacks build depth/choice, ie: fixed weapon skills are too restrictive, forced heal/elite slot is too restrictive, traits aren’t balanced well.

Personally, I think the single biggest game improvement would be a relatively simple one: removing the requirement to slot an elite skill in #10, and/or heal skill in #6. I think you should be able to slot any utility skill in #10.

That said, I would love to see GW1-style sub-classes return, even if it were a limited form, eg: you can choose to slot weapon skills from a subclass’ weapon skills if your own class can use that weapon, eg: an Ele/Me using sceptre/focus and speccing for conditions could slot confusing images to replace one of their air skills.

still hoping focus gets some attention in the new year.

reikken.4961:

and sigil of earth is 60% bleed on crit
and glyph of elemental power is 25% burn on hit
and elemental surge is burn on hit in fire

you can have a massive explosion of torment stacks, getting a ton in a very short time

assuming they are all applied by scepter earth #1, that’s only 5 potential stacks (can’t apply burn with ES while in earth). seems in the ballpark of reasonable… just need to tune the torment duration into balance.

might be better for this potential GM trait to be more along the lines of “apply torment whenever you apply a condition”, as the core issue of condi Ele is the limited number of condis but also that you can only effectively apply damaging conditions while in earth attunement.

Sporks.4395:

20/30/0/10/10 full zerk. Make them rally.

Fixed that for you.

• caster-only version of Elemental Attunement as baseline, add new trait that restores the AOE capability. switch EA water attunement effect with current water 15.

utilities:

• glyphs: replace the non-elite glyph of elementals, add a decent glyph trait
• signets: slight buff to signet of Water passive and active, traits are ok
• conjures: remove clunkiness of core mechanic, it’s bloody awful

weapons:

• focus: add some mobility and/or healing, buff fire wall
• sceptre: improve general usability of fire #2 and water #2
• dagger: revert ride the lightning CD nerf
• staff: speed up air #2, maybe add small leap backward to air #3.

I would love an invite please. cheers.

Karamon.6208:

Blizz made druids more specialised not because they were bad but because they could carry flag, deal damage, tank damage and heal themselves at the same time :p

No at release, druids could do all 3 of them, but did all 3 badly. Healing was within sight of being decent. By TBC, druids could melee DPS and tank well, OR nuke well, OR heal well, and do the other things at ~50% effectiveness.

GW2 Ele is like release druid but needs to move more in the direction of TBC druid. Slightly less versatile, but more able to be competitive at a single role instead of being mediocre at all of them.

ens.9854:

Don’t worry ele there will always be a place for you mindlessly stacking might in dungeon groups

don’t forget mindlessly dropping water fields (heals) and statics (speed) in PVP…

Eles pay way too high of a price for “versatility”. Blizzard tried the same thing with the Druid class, which was widely regarded as terrible until they reworked talent (AKA trait) trees to allow druids to specialise more in DPS/heals/tanking. In general Ele traits are not all that impactful – DPS/heal/tank role is more dictated by stats than talents for Eles in this game and I think that’s wrong.

reikken.4961:

4 stacks of torment every 2 seconds seems fine?
I’ll give you that Ele needs quite a lot to become viable as a condition damage class, but that’s a lot of power for a single trait.

sceptre earth #1 stacks 3 bleeds every 2 sec, where are you getting 4 from?

3 stacks of torment per 2 sec with a duration of 3-4 sec per stack isn’t that strong. Seems about right for a GM trait IMO.

the only good thing about the changes was that i can now run 3 cantrips on a staff Ele and still have a blast finisher in the heal slot.

the earth 30 trait however, is garbage.

and yet they majorly nerfed Ele in last patch, and buffed phantasm mesmers…

reikken.4961:

scerevisiae.1972:

My suggestion for a GM earth trait:
Apply 1 stack of torment (5sec) every time you apply burning or bleeding

if this has no ICD, it would be absolutely outrageous. considering you can potentially score 4 individual applications of bleed/burn in one hit

so 4 stacks of torment? seems fine to me…

could alternatively be a single stack of torment whenever you apply bleed/burn, but make it for a longer duration. point being, to allow Eles to reliably apply a 3rd damage condition. the specifics of #stacks/duration can be worked out later.

TBH, Diamond Skin should have been the thing that made condi Ele viable, instead we got a crappy passive trait that’s OP in 1v1s and useless everywhere else.

My suggestion for a GM earth trait:
Apply 1 stack of torment (5sec) every time you apply burning or bleeding

Could also think about addition of bleeding or torment to focus (eg: fire #4) and other weak skills (eg: sceptre water #1, glyphs).

you can sit in earth attunement with sceptre and together with signet of fire, you can achieve decent condi DPS — the core problems that prevent condi Ele from being viable are:

• can reliably apply only 2 conditions (easily cleansed). not easy to apply cover condis.
• forced to sit in earth or fire attunements — switching to water or air reduces condi DPS to zero.

Cookamatic.4316:

Sadly, the Conjures have plenty of disadvantages:
-Long Cast Time
-Low Charges
-Team Mates Wasting the Spare
-Inability to Use Normal Skills

So… why use conjures again? If it’s just to apply a few bleeds then you’d be better off with signet of fire for the burning, or GoEP for the burning proc, or the Cleansing Fire cantrip. If it’s to gain defense then cantrips are also far better, eg: Armour of Earth for protection and stability.

Bottom line: there is almost always a better alternative to conjures (in PVP).

yeah those aren’t the greatest builds IMO.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Micro Hard.3601:

Conjure weaps are pretty fine in their current state. If you look at any dps test LH, FGS, and bow are all either highest burst or highest sustained dps sources in the game. This not only goes for PvE but a couple can be applied in PvP as well such as the bow/fgs in a capture the point objective scenario. I would hardly say that conjure weaps are in deep need of an upgrade and doubt we will be seeing one anytime soon after they recently buffed them however minor the buff was.

It’s not so much that they are weak, as that they are really difficult to use.

one might say, clunky as all kitten.

InfernoCrossing.8063:

scerevisiae.1972:

snip

I’m assuming those Staff Eles you’re talking about were sitting in the middle of the zerg clash. In that situation, the best placement is on the sides and away from the main fighting. This goes double if the Ele is going Zerk.

You can’t hide from retal damage, no matter how good your positioning is. Not to mention a lot of groups will have dedicated staff Ele killers, and/or splash damage. 14K HP and 2K armour doesn’t go very far.

Water #4 keeping its CD and becoming AOE instead of single target seems reasonable. The benchmark here should be http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spinal_Shivers.

I think Fire #4 would be fine with 3-4sec of burning instead of its current 1sec. It would be nice if there were a secondary use for it though, like passing through it removes conditions, or enemies passing through it are crippled, something like that.

With healing signet, adrenal health, regen from dogged march, regen food and possibly even dolyak runes, warriors can comfortably get >1K HP/sec passive regen. That’s before speccing shout heals for another ~4K burst healing every 30sec.

Even with this setup, my warr still crits earthshaker for 4-5K every 10sec. You can’t outrun them either if they’re running sword or GS in the other slot.

Yes I know it’s overpowered, but hey, it’s legit, so it’s what I run.

gandlethorpe.2641:

the main problem with conjures, being their cumbersome mechanics and limited ability to combo with other elementalist skills.

yeah this is really the crux of it – they’re clunky.

the other core issue for me is the fundamentally low defense/HP of Ele makes it very difficult to justify giving up a higher utility/more defensive skill (read: cantrip).

conjures have received multiple rounds of buffs now and they’re still terrible.

losing 21 skills to gain 5 is a terrible design.

the correct answer is not to use focus at all.

I’d never run focus simply because of how inferior it is to O/H dagger, specifically, the complete lack of any kind of healing or mobility skills. The earth skills on focus are equal to dagger, but all the other focus skills are considerably weaker.

Focus needs a major buff IMO. In particular:

• fire #4 – just pathetically weak, useful only as fire field for blasting
• fire #5 – also very weak
• air #4 – should probably grant swiftness, earth #4 already reflects projectiles so potentially rework this skill (blind?)
• water #4 – low dmg single target chill – compare to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spinal_Shivers, which does much more dmg, has longer chill and shorter cooldown.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Mbelch.9028:

I understand it affected some builds, but none of mine were affected at all. I actually had some new options opened up.

In my opinion it SHOULDN’T be moved, it should be STANDARD for all elementalists starting at birth.

Yea, it should automatically already be that way. The trait should just make it apply to nearby allies.

Yes

Bios.1398:

d/d for the most part is fine
…
of course, this is purely from a 1on1 scenario

In a 1v1 arena, sure D/D is probably fine, except for the fact that there’s really only 1 good spec: 0/10/0/30/30 with cantrips.

Reverting the RTL and swiftness nerfs should be looked at now though – D/D Ele is a crappy solo roamer solely because they are now so slow and can be outrun by everything.

IMO it’s ridiculous that the highest-HP and highest-armour class is also the fastest, while the lowest HP and lowest-armour class is the 3rd slowest.

FrownyClown.8402:

scerevisiae.1972:

Mochann.5298:

That’s just plain wrong.

Says the guy playing zerker Ele in zergs… you realise when you die you rally everyone you lolmeteorstormed right? You can single-handedly lose the whole fight.

Zerker Ele is fine for humping towers but it’s about the worst thing you can possibly do in a roaming zerg. If you don’t get downed as a zerker Ele in a zerg fight you probably outblobbed the enemy and were going to win the fight anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syb07q5Lu3A

we ran with many heavy dps eles

Not sure what you’re trying to show? Zerker meteor storm hurts? sure, but a zerker Ele that tags 25 people will rally all of them when their 12K HP gets obliterated vs any decent enemy group. Have seen whole fights lost this way on numerous occasions.

Like I said, ff you’re not getting downed as a zerker Ele in a zerg fight you were probably going to win the fight anyway.

The fundamental problem with Ele IMO is that skill floor and ceiling are so high – really good players can perform really well. Bad Eles perform terribly. The problem is that with the majority, who have average skill levels, the class/weapon underperforms.

In other words, the base performance of the class should be raised, without raising the skill ceiling too much.

oZii.2864:

All Ele’s run x/x//20/30 D/D!!

Would be willing to bet if you collated the specs of Ele who’ve played at least an hour of either WVW or sPVP in the past 2 weeks, that x/x/x/20+/20+ would be the most common trait setup, with cantrips as the most common utility type.

hopbounce.9812:

I also agree the trait is quite good. I think people don’t realize how many conditions are avoided by having this trait. I don’t even think it’s exclusively anti-condition builds either.

I don’t think you realise how often the trait is 100% useless. With 15-18K HP, it takes 1 or maybe 2 autoattacks to make your 30point trait 100% useless. If you then blow your healing CDs early (and probably overheal/waste healing in the process), then you’re making it easier for the enemy to kill you.

Thing is, with DS, you still have to take condi removal with you, whereas Cleansing Water (30 water) works all the time, works with all sources of regen, and integrates nicely with other traits, and is all the condi removal you’re ever going to need.

A lot of power classes open up with a condition like immobilize. These get ignored with diamond skin.

Actually most classes will open with CC, against which DS does nothing. After their opening combo, you’re below 90% HP and DS is useless.

You can also walk through necro marks. (I ran a 0/0/30/20/20 and 0/0/30/10/30 build).

You can already dodge-roll through marks to trigger them and take no damage. This also has the advantage of clearing the mark whereas with DS and +90% health the mark stays intact.

Ultimately I went back to 0/10/0/30/30 because I’m more of a reactive player and this build felt like I had to plan my offenses a bit more than I care to, but it’s far from useless and does introduce build diversity.

I disagree. I don’t see any high-level players running it and I don’t see it in WVW. In WVW chat, it is consistently derided and ridiculed as useless (except in condi 1v1s, no arguments there, it’s blatantly OP).

Mochann.5298:

That’s just plain wrong.

Says the guy playing zerker Ele in zergs… you realise when you die you rally everyone you lolmeteorstormed right? You can single-handedly lose the whole fight.

Zerker Ele is fine for humping towers but it’s about the worst thing you can possibly do in a roaming zerg. If you don’t get downed as a zerker Ele in a zerg fight you probably outblobbed the enemy and were going to win the fight anyway.